


Dark and Deep

by chantefable



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Self-Denial, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: There was a certain almost magical space within Nate reserved for Brad.But he made his life go on regardless.





	Dark and Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



> This story is based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, as written by Ed Burns and David Simon and as portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard, Stark Sands, and others. It is a work of fiction, ergo it never happened.

So at a knock  
I emptied my cage  
To hide in the world  
And alter with age.

Robert Frost

  


Some days, Nate thought about Brad.

He was adrift for a while after getting back stateside, ideas half-formed and in disarray, the sharp feelings subsiding and the chasm he had felt opening within him folding on itself. He could not say if it had been too much too soon or if it had been too long; it had felt like both, like everything, and then Nate felt nothing. And he got out.

It was obvious that Brad felt differently, lived differently, and had a different way of being a Marine. The choice that Nate had made would not have occurred to Brad: was was operating on a different terrain entirely. On a purely intellectual level, Nate often wondered what it was like. Brad was an interesting man, and Nate respected him, liked him. He had sought Brad out and had counted on him, and Nate was assured that he was a good judge of character. Brad's opinion was therefore valuable, whether it manifested through scathing insults or stone-faced acceptance, or the sharp edge of his smile. It was important to understand Brad's choices, or words, or lack thereof. Nate never missed an opportunity to learn something useful.

So he thought about Brad frequently even as he got out and moved on, fast. Moved across the country and got into grad school, studying day in and day out; like a shark, purposeful, single-minded. 

The days felt awfully long now; Nate suspected that his sleep patterns would be screwed up forever after. He ran in the mornings, and most evenings, too, mind blissfully blank.

At night, Nate thought about Brad.

There were memories aplenty to cloud his vision, to shroud him and lull him to sleep: desert grit and heavy heat, the air vibrating between them, respect and appreciation and a keen sense of rightness that echoed in the marrow of his bones. A serendipitous sense of belonging and being equals. But somehow, as sleep dragged Nate further down into the green-gold haze, his thoughts turned loose and languid with images stemming from another reality: the dimness of a forest, a blessed coolness enveloping him, Brad's pale skin bare and cool to the touch, a calming mizzle, endless time and absence of orders.

Not a hint of arid sand or the arrhythmic pace of war.

He did not dream of the bridge, or of ordering Brad to leave the bomb, or the youthful intensity bleeding off of Brad as he ran around with his arms spread out like the wings of a plane, alive. There was nothing true, grounded, or sensible about Nate's dreams.

At times Nate wondered if he sought influence because simply because it figured that he _ought_ to. And he wondered if he ought to have done something else instead, if he had actually held in the palm of his hand something that he ought to have treasured. Instead, he had written a book, like an exorcism, and shut a lockless door on the part of his life that had changed him the most.

There was a certain almost magical space within Nate reserved for Brad. But he made his life go on regardless.

Nate promptly fit into a life that he fashioned for himself. Not the one he had ever dreamed of, to be honest, or considered particularly worthy, but one that suited a man he had become, with an exoskeleton of competence to disguise the parts of him that were gone, withered; a certain goodness he'd never known he'd had before it had been leeched off by the wraiths of war. He went to Harvard and he studied Business; he observed people in whom there was nothing to admire and was intelligent enough, capable enough, to acquire the same veneer of slickness and entitlement. He imagined he should be surprised that it came naturally to him, just like the Corps. He was just the right kind of ruthless and the right kind of presentable to do business administration in businesses that always been administered with no thought spared for mortal grief. 

Contractor companies head hunted him, hunted him, _haunted_ him. It was almost too easy.

Nate set himself on this career path because it suited his skill set. It could deliver a sliver of success, a shred of power and actual decision-making. It would rob a better man of sleep, to delve into the details of what Nate was committing himself to, but Nate had already understood far too much about the military industrial complex anyway. It would have been a shame to let it all go to waste, after all. He imagined when he grew older and got tired of it all, he could become a scrupulous lobbyist. (Or perhaps it was not Nate who imagined this, but the shadow of a bright-eyed Dartmouth graduate who was passionate about the Aeneid and warrior culture.)

They went their separate ways, and Nate knew that with each step and passing day they were being dragged further apart, inevitably, purposefully altered. Their past affinity, the unquestionable understanding established between them, was an insufficient anchor in absence of communication. There was a haunted void in Nate's mind where Brad might have been; he knew _of_ him, of his time in England, new exploits and new achievements, but he didn't _know_ him, and Nate fancied himself unsentimental enough to avoid adding 'anymore'. Truthfully, Nate told himself often enough that surely he had never known Brad: their kind of comprehension, and even the tendrils of fragile fondness, could not have been all that momentous or meaningful, or Nate would not have had let go.

He told this himself often enough, and it soothed the sting a little, but the sting of _what_ , exactly? Nate was carefully avoiding examining it altogether.

At times, Nate thought himself rather cold.

But it was just an observation he was forced to make, a trait to be turned into a tactical advantage or disadvantage by necessity. It was something to be aware of.

He was not yet so arrogant as to believe that Brad had not seen it before, way back when he had made Captain, froze like a mountain lake, said good-bye and left. Brad was astute, after all, and terrifyingly competent, and Nate was certain that no one had ever looked at him as closely as Brad had.

Brad was definitely better off without him anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Quote in the beginning from The Lockless Door, a poem by Robert Frost.
> 
> Title from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a poem by Robert Frost:
> 
> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
> But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep.


End file.
